Using the same basic design but different objects, the artist who placed a 15-foot sculpture on an 80-year-old Boulder woman's lawn over the weekend has now left his mark on University Hill.

Boulder History Museum curator Laura Stroud arrived at work Tuesday morning to find an unexpected object jutting into the sky on the museum's front lawn at 1206 Euclid Ave. Other museum staffers said the piece wasn't there on Monday.

"I went up to it and walked around it," Stroud said. "I kind of said to myself, 'What are we now, an art museum?'"

Stroud found a black tin attached to the sculpture and opened it to find two pairs of handmade earrings inside, with a note signed PS and reading: "I hope u enjoy this thing."

That's exactly what Donna Coughlin found tied to a sculpture on the front lawn of her home at 25th Street and Valmont Road, which she first noticed outside her window around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

Both pieces of art have a metal-wrapped post set in a heavy concrete base. The top of Coughlin's sculpture has a collection of rusty chains, mirrors and a padlock, while the sculpture left at the museum is topped off with a pair of Elan MBX skis, a pair of hedge clippers, a vice grip, a shoe sole hanging from a chain, and a child's bicycle wheel.

Both sculptures are equipped with solar-powered bulbs that bathe the artwork in white light at night.

Coughlin told the Camera on Monday that she believes the sculpture left on her lawn is the work of University of Colorado master of fine arts graduate Mark Guilbeau, who left a sculpture of a giant bug on her lawn in 1987. That sculpture from 23 years ago also offered a pair of earrings -- a gift that Coughlin still has among her keepsakes -- and was wrapped in printing plates from a 1984 Lafayette, La., newspaper.

Guilbeau states on an artist's Web site that he was born in Lafayette, La., and now lives in Charlotte, N.C.

Boulder police, who were called to Coughlin's house after she reported the sculpture, have been unable to locate the 50-year-old sculptor. They do not view the sculpture plantings as a crime, but they would like to ask the artist what he plans to do with the pieces.

Ashley Carlisle, a sculpture professor at the University of Wyoming who helped teach an iron-pouring class with Guilbeau a few years ago, said her old colleague is likely loving the attention.

"He's probably just trying to shake things up," she said.

Carlisle said Guilbeau is following a tradition of renegade artists who create and display art on their own terms. She cited Banksy, the British street artist, who generated headlines in 2005 when he surreptitiously hung his works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several other museums in New York City.

Garrison Roots, a CU professor of sculpture, also has a strong suspicion that his old student is responsible for the nocturnal sculpture deposits around the city. Guilbeau graduated from the university's fine arts program in 1987.

"He made large things that were always collaged out of smaller things," Roots said. "He was very dedicated, very driven and worked really hard all the time."

Roots won't venture a guess as to what kind of statement his former student might be trying to make, but he said as performance art, the sculptures themselves run the risk of being overshadowed by the way they are being exhibited.

"Often enough, we draw our attention to art for un-art reasons," the professor said. "Right now, we're less interested in the art than the fact that he stuck it on someone's lawn in the middle of the night."

But Richard Ferguson, a Boulder sculptor who works in various metals, said the artist responsible for this week's displays is pulling off a brilliant form of "guerilla art." He's finding an unauthorized home for works of art that may be too large to display anywhere else, he said.

"He's getting people to see his sculptures, and the element of surprise and mystery will simply increase the number of people who see it," Ferguson said. "If he wanted publicity, he was immensely successful."

The city of Boulder, which owns the land on which the museum sits, hasn't decided what it is going to do with the latest sculpture. But city spokeswoman Sarah Huntley made available a 12-page policy document that spells out how Boulder acquires and "deaccessions" art.

Stroud, with the Boulder History Museum, loves the whimsical and mysterious nature of Boulder's recent sculpture drops and hopes to see them continue.

"This is one of those things that makes you smile; it's a distraction from the stress of the season," she said. "I'd like to see the mystery continue to unfold."

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